The development of a new spectrometric system capable of simultaneous multielement trace analysis of biological materials is in progress, with the ultimate goal of providing rapid, routine, and automated methods for medical diagnosis. The system consists of a source of atomic radiation and an optical multichannel spectrometer which can be readily interfaced with a minicomputer. The heart of the new optical multichannel spectrometer is a recently available vidicon television tube which functions as the detector in the system and allows the simultaneous monitoring of 500 channels. Studies are being made to evaluate the vidicon tube as a detector for atomic spectroscopy. It is being studied with different monochromators to obtain the best compromise between spectral range and resolution for simultaneous multielement analysis. The vidicon- monochromator is being investigated with a number of sources for atomic emission, multielement analysis. An image intensifier vidicon tube will be investigated for determining low level trace elements in biological systems. The optical multichannel spectrometer will be interfaced to a minicomputer for real-time operator interaction during the course of experiments to control and optimize spectral parameters. The system will be used to develop multielement trace methods for the monitoring of body fluids and tissue in medical diagnosis.